Jim Hull

The Vampire in Free Fall Jim Hull

Publisher Marketing: In the realm of vampire fiction, we meet dangerous, romantic, exotic beings - in a word, they're extraordinary. But what if a perfectly ordinary person became a vampire? Would his undead existence be ... ordinary? Hardly. THE VAMPIRE IN FREE FALL takes us on a roller-coaster ride of adventure as our "ordinary" night stalker finds himself caught up in espionage, murder for hire, grand theft and bloody revenge. The dangers of his tour as a soldier in Vietnam quickly pale against the car chases, street fights, burglaries and contract killings of his new life as a blood-drinking assassin-spy. Whether he can escape his human handlers and attain freedom, peace of mind and the love he craves is another matter. But never is this vampire's life merely ordinary. Jim Hull - author of Are Humans Obsolete? - brings a unique approach to the vampire thriller, taking us from Saigon to the outer planets, from the 1960s to the twenty-third century, from a war in the jungle to battles in space. It's part hard-boiled, part sci-fi, part dark comedy and all excitement, a tale that'll keep you in its grip. "It will appeal to anybody who enjoys vampire books . . . I'm gonna hate myself in the morning but I need to keep reading!" Contributor Bio:  Hull, Jim In 1972 I had finished school and was starting out on my career as an artist, working part-time on a trash-collecting crew in Bloomington, Indiana. One day we had taken the garbage truck to pick up a load of old white scrap paper from a printing company. Just as I was about to heave it into the truck's hopper, I thought to myself that maybe I could keep some of it for drawing. The paper measured 23 x 11.5 and had a nice plate surface to it. My supervisor said, "Fine, just fold it up and toss it in the back of the cab," which I did, and when it landed it looked just like a book! That night I suddenly sat up in bed and knew what I was going to do with my immediate future. In appreciation to baseball, I would illustrate "Casey at the Bat," and I would illustrate it on the paper I had rescued earlier that day from the jaws of the garbage truck. A few days later as I was looking through some books of poetry for the "Casey" text, I came across a poem called "Casey's Revenge" by a James Wilson. I'd not seen it before, but after one reading, it moved next on my list of things to illustrate. In 1976 Dover published "Casey at the Bat", with my 56 drawings (one for each line of the poem) and an introduction by Martin Gardner. Then, in 2012 Dover reissued "Casey" in a new format, with a new cover. That nudged me to dig out my old drawings for "Casey's Revenge" and look into getting them published as well, and that is what you see here.